Editorial: Time is now for redistricting reform in Michigan

Take a cue from our neighbors across Lake Michigan

Michigan's process for drawing legislative districts is blatantly partisan and inherently unfair to voters. Now, long before it's time to draw them again, would be a good time for elected leaders to address the issue.

States are required to redraw district lines, for everything from Congress to county boards of commissioners, every 10 years after the national Census to reflect demographic changes.

Ideally, such redistricting ensures every vote counts by drawing boundaries that reflect natural communities with common geography and interests. In reality, however, redistricting too often rewards the political party that happens to be in power.

Politicians, in effect, choose their voters, resulting in communities losing clout in the state legislatures and Congress - think the 3rd Congressional District Battle Creek shares with Grand Rapids - and artificially inflated political majorities in elected office.

Consider the 2012 election, in which President Barack Obama carried Michigan by 9 points. Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives received about 240,000 more votes than their Republican counterparts, yet won just five of 15 congressional seats.

The report's authors explained their rationale this way: "Drawing new district lines in states with the most redistricting activity presented the opportunity to solidify conservative policymaking at the state level and maintain a Republican stronghold in the U.S. House of Representatives for the next decade."

Gerrymandering districts is nothing new, and given the opportunities, Democrats have proven no less nefarious than their GOP colleagues. Politics can be a dirty game.

But it doesn't have to be.

Across Lake Michigan, citizens in Wisconsin are calling on legislative leaders to allow hearings on bills that would create a system for redistricting modeled on the successful nonpartisan approach taken for more than 30 years in Iowa.

The bills are mostly Democrat-backed, but the push for reform is coming from a united front of newspaper editorial writers, nonprofit groups and engaged citizens, and have the editorial endorsements of the Wisconsin State Journal, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Green Bay Press-Gazette, Appleton Post-Crescent, Beloit Daily News, La Crosse Tribune, Chippewa Herald, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, Oshkosh Northwestern and Janesville Gazette.

According to the Journal Sentinel, the bills would task a "nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau with drawing maps that are compact, contiguous, 'strictly nonpartisan' and bow to established municipal and county boundaries as much as possible.

"?Iowa has used a similar process since 1981, and the process has been smooth - and cheap."

We would add "fair," as well, and we believe that it's something that Michigan should be doing, too.

We understand that we're asking Republicans to give up an advantage, which is why now would be a good time to start this process. A lot can happen in seven years, and implementing a nonpartisan process would ensure fairness to both parties.

Most importantly, it gives voters a stronger voice and could alleviate some of the rancor so typical of our Legislature today.